


The Power of Tuesdays

by The_Plaid_Slytherin



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2011-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/pseuds/The_Plaid_Slytherin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Felix and Louis are assigned to work together on the algae planet, they find themselves getting closer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power of Tuesdays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kappamaki33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kappamaki33/gifts).



Louis hated the prickliness of Tuesdays. He didn't know why they were prickly. They just _were_. All the worst days were Tuesdays. Maybe that was what made them prickly.

Or being prickly made them bad.

It was a Tuesday that he decided to sit with the _Galactica_ crew in the mess for the first time. Usually, he sat with people he knew from _Pegasus_ , but a change in shifts had conspired to throw off Louis's schedule from the rest of them.

Thus, when he hovered awkwardly in the corner with his tray, his only option was to sit with Dee.

"Hey," she said brightly, when he placed his tray next to hers. "Guys," she addressed the table at large, "do you mind if Louis sits with us?"

"Nope," Hot Dog said.

"Fine by me," Racetrack added.

"Sure," Gaeta said.

Louis sat, and the other four resumed their conversation.

Actually, it was three of them—Gaeta wasn't really saying anything. Neither was Louis, for that matter. He didn't really know any of the others, besides Dee, and even talking to Dee was weird, because the last time they'd really spoken, she'd been XO of _Pegasus_ , and now, she was the same rank as Louis.

Louis found himself watching Gaeta eat, for lack of anything better to do. He didn't mean to do it in a weird way—it was just that he happened to be sitting directly across from him, and it would be harder to _not_ watch Gaeta eating.

"What do you think, Louis?" Dee said suddenly.

"Huh?" Louis hadn't been paying attention to the others' conversation.

"Of the algae," Dee repeated.

"Oh." Louis looked down into his bowl. This was their second day eating the processed algae. He lifted a forkful of it, examining it closely. It was a sickly green color. The exact same color as Tuesday. "It's okay."

"It sucks," Racetrack said baldly, punctuating her pronouncement with a sip of water.

"It's better than starving," Hot Dog reminded her.

"You're a Viper pilot," Racetrack said. "You don't have to go back and forth carting this stuff around."

"I'd take a trip down there." Hot Dog jabbed his bowl with his fork somewhat weakly, as if he'd lost the urge to eat any more. "Breathe some fresh air, walk on the ground. It's been a while; I wasn't on New Capri—" He stopped immediately, cutting his eyes toward Gaeta. "I'll swap shifts with you sometime, Racetrack."

The conversation turned to Hot Dog and Racetrack working out a time where Hot Dog was free, so they could switch.

"I'm done," Gaeta said, standing up abruptly. He hadn't finished his breakfast, but he took the tray back to the counter anyway. Louis watched him go and tried to make it look like he wasn't.

Next to him, Dee sighed. Louis turned to look at her and was surprised to see that she was looking at him speculatively.

"What?" he asked curiously.

"Nothing. I just worry about him sometimes."

"Gaeta?"

She nodded. "He needs someone."

Louis could only nod vaguely.

**

Tuesday didn't fully rear its prickly head until later in the morning when Tigh pulled Louis aside and informed him that he'd be going down to the planet to do some help with the scouting work for more algae beds.

In his mind, the ideal thing would have been for Louis to protest, saying he didn't, in fact, know anything about finding algae beds. But of course, that was ridiculous. There was no way Louis was going to deny the XO, especially not with all the power of Tuesday against him.

Tigh probably loved Tuesdays.

When Louis got to the Raptor—Hot Dog was piloting, he noted—that would take him to the surface, he was somewhat surprised to see Gaeta already there. He had a pile of maps in his arms that he looked to be struggling with. Louis ran forward to help him.

"Thanks," Gaeta said, once they'd successfully divided the load between them. "Hoshi, right?"

"Louis," Louis said. "Call me Louis." He was pleased with how smooth he sounded, but then he caught himself and wondered why he was so concerned with sounding smooth.

There was a hint of a smile on Gaeta's features. Louis didn't think he'd ever seen him smile. "Then I insist that you call me Felix."

"Felix," Louis repeated. He liked saying it. There was something crisp and pleasant about the X. It must be really exciting to have an X in your name. Felix looked like the kind of person who could _appreciate_ having an X in his name.

"Are you guys about ready?" Hot Dog asked, dropping into the pilots' seat.

"Just a minute." Felix dug around in the box he'd set down.

"Do you know what exactly we're supposed to do?" Louis asked.

Felix straightened up, a long, thin instrument in his hand. "Tigh didn't tell you?"

Louis shook his head. Felix indicated to Hot Dog that he had everything he needed and they were ready to go.

"We're supposed to survey," Felix said. "Look around and see if there are any more algae beds in the foothills that the first scouts missed."

"Okay," Louis said. This made sense. "Just us?"

"Just us." Felix pulled a small notebook from his pocket and began paging through it. It was full of diagrams and coordinates. "We need a lot of raw manpower for the actual labor down where they're processing it." He snapped the notebook shut. "So, it's guys like us who get stuck with the job of looking around."

"I suppose that's not so bad," Louis said thoughtfully as he watched through the Raptor's windscreen as they went through the launch preparations. "It might be nice to get some fresh air."

"I hear it's hot down there," Hot Dog called from the cockpit. "Like, sweltering." He sounded positively gleeful.

 _Tuesday_ , Louis thought, letting his head hit the back of the seat. _Has to be Tuesday_.

**

The ride down wasn't so bad. For one thing, it gave Louis the opportunity to study Felix when he wasn't eating.

And, he concluded, Felix was worth studying.

Louis hadn't paid much attention to Felix before. They were on opposite shifts, usually. He didn't know anything about him beyond the fact that he was Dee's friend, though of course he knew about New Caprica. Everybody knew about New Caprica.

Louis wondered if it bothered him. He thought about it. He hadn't gone to New Caprica—had barely even visited. A lot of _Pegasus_ crew had stayed with the fleet—moving down to the planet hadn't seemed as widespread as it had on _Galactica_.

Louis wasn't sure what to say. He didn't know what would be appropriate to say. Dee had told him that Felix "needed someone." She hadn't been more explicit about that, but Louis thought he got her drift.

"So," he said. "It's Tuesday."

Felix looked up, apparently having been lost in thought. "What?"

Louis suddenly felt very stupid. "I just said it was Tuesday," he explained.

"It is," Felix agreed. "You know, I kind of lose track of the days of the week."

Louis nodded. "I have a day planner. It goes for three years." He shrugged. "I don't know what I'll do at the end of this year. I just like using it. I put everything in there."

It may have been Louis's imagination, but Felix's eyes seemed to light up in recognition. "So do I. Dee makes fun of me. The schedule's the same almost every day, but still."

"But there's just something about having it on paper."

"Right." He paused. "Mine goes up four years."

"Maybe after next year, we'll have to share." That had been an incredibly ridiculous thing to say and Louis felt his face grow hot.

To his surprise, Felix smiled. "Maybe we will."

**

Chief Tyrol and Sam Anders were working together to head the ground crew doing the harvest.

"We're almost done here," Sam said, making a notation on Felix's map. "The next place we'd like to check is over here." He made a circle a little ways to the west.

"Okay." Felix examined where Sam was pointing.

"It's a bit of a hike."

"We don't mind, do we?" Felix turned to look at Louis.

 _No_ , Louis thought automatically, _we don't mind_.

Hot Dog had not heard wrong about the heat. It truly was oppressive. Felix and Louis stripped off their jackets and made their way out of the camp. Louis found himself being glad that he hadn't been drafted into doing the harvest work. It was clearly backbreaking and exhausting. He managed to catch Showboat's eye and give her a small wave. She glowered at him.

"So, how far is it?" Louis asked, as he and Felix sorted out their gear at the edge of camp.

"About three miles. We can make that, right?"

"Of course." Louis nodded. He hadn't done a lot of walking in a while, but he didn't really have a choice.

Plus, he wanted to spend more time with Felix, and if Felix was going to walk three miles (and that went both ways, Louis was just now realizing. Six miles.) in the heat and the dust, then Louis wanted to, too.

"We'll travel as light as possible. Leave some of this stuff here." Felix hung his compass around his neck, and began shoving some of the excavation tools out of the bag. "We don't need to do some of these tests. Those can be done anytime."

"Tests?" Louis asked, holding the bag open.

"Yeah, soil, air, water. To see what the place is like." He paused. "It's kind of a… side project."

"But it's not like we can stay here, can we?" Louis was hesitant to bring it up, in case Felix was reminded of New Caprica.

If he was, he didn't seem to show it. "No." Felix zipped the bag shut and slung it on his back. "We can stay a while, but not indefinitely. For one thing, the sun's highly unstable."

Louis looked up. "Is that why—"

"It's so hot? Yeah."

They set off walking, under the beating hot sun. Louis found himself glad that they weren't planning to settle here.

Things were getting quiet. Louis had to do something.

"So," he said, at the exact same moment Felix also said, "So."

They stopped and looked away.

"Sorry," Felix muttered. "You go."

"No, it's okay. You go."

"Okay." Felix bit his lip. "I forgot what I was going to say."

Louis shrugged. "I was going to ask you about the sun."

Felix seemed to be in his element. "It's very old—much older than our sun. It's in one of its last stages of life." He actually looked excited by this prospect. "There's a bunch of civilian scientists studying it. I had the chance to talk with them earlier, and it was fascinating. This is a rare opportunity."

Louis nodded as Felix went on, talking about the sun. He hadn't studied astronomy seriously, but he liked hearing about.

"I'm rambling, aren't I?" Felix finally said. "What about you?"

Louis blinked. "What about me what?"

Felix gave him a faint smile. "Anything. What kind of food do you like? Why'd you join the Fleet? What was your life like, you know, before?"

Louis thought for a moment. It had been a long time since he'd thought about that. He hadn't ever had to tell anyone this—everybody he knew on _Pegasus_ already knew, and they knew it was hard to talk about.

"I'm from Picon," he said. "I joined up to help with college. But then, I realized I liked it and never left."

Felix nodded sympathetically.

"I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. Being in the military, being on _Pegasus_ really helped. Admiral Cain helped," he added, since he knew she was mostly an unknown entity to the crew of _Galactica_.

"I always knew I wanted to do this," Felix said. "I was always interested in math and science, but I was always interested in the military, too, and this is _exactly_ what I wanted to do."

"What, climb a dusty algae mountain?" Louis teased.

Felix smirked. "It comes with the territory.

"My parents didn't like it," he went on, after a while. "They thought I should be doing something 'more important.'" Louis could practically feel the implied quotation marks. "I think they just didn't realize how many opportunities I really have." He paused. " _Had_ , I suppose."

"But if you weren't serving on _Galactica_ , you'd probably be dead," Louis said softly.

"Right."

There was a long silence Louis was trying to figure out how to break when Felix stopped them. "There, look. We should mark this area." There was a pool of algae right in front of them. It was only about thirty feet across, probably too small to have been seen by the scouting Raptors.

"We'll still want to harvest these smaller pools," Felix was saying. "It might not look like much, but every little bit matters when we need food."

"Yeah," Louis said.

He didn't want to think about the possibility that they might run out of food again. Almost as much as he didn't want to think about the fact that there might be nothing to eat but algae for the rest of his life.

Felix and Louis measured the pool and made a note on their map where it was. They stuck a few bright orange flags in the ground around the edge of the pool and by the path they'd taken.

It was tiring work, with a lot of bending and stooping, and by the time they were finished, Louis felt grimy and sweaty. As much as he had enjoyed walking with Felix, he was looking forward to taking a shower.

"Perfect," Felix declared. "On to the next one."

Louis groaned inwardly.

**

They worked for a few more hours, tagging three more pools. One of them was barely more than a puddle and Louis was about to suggest that they really didn't need it, but Felix seemed to really lose himself in the physical labor, so Louis went along with it.

Plus, he liked looking at Felix's arms.

When they were finished, they sat on the edge of the hillside path, letting their legs hang over the edge.

"This was nice," Felix commented.

Louis was surprised Felix thought it had been nice, too—pleasantly surprised. "Yeah, it was."

"Listen," Felix said. "Tigh said I could pick somebody to help me do some of these tests. Would you be interested in doing that with me?"

"Sure!" Louis said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

Maybe Tuesday wasn't so bad after all.

**

The next day, Louis was up bright and early to catch the Raptor down to the surface. They would be testing soil today, Felix had told him. This would entail gathering the samples and bringing them back to _Galactica_ where they'd test them in the lab.

It wasn't so bad, going down to the planet, Louis decided. Sure it was hot and the sun was merciless, but he was really enjoying spending time with Felix.

He was even reaching the point of hoping Felix enjoyed spending time with him.

This threw Louis somewhat. He hadn't even _thought_ about a relationship since the attacks. Lots of other people had lost loved ones that day, and many of them had moved on, but Louis hadn't.

It wasn't even a case of being too wrapped up in Jonathan—Louis wasn't sure what it was. He just knew that it probably wasn't happening for him and he'd gotten used to the idea of being single.

Felix had changed that, though. As they worked together over the next few days, Louis found his attraction growing more distracting.

 _"He needs someone,"_ Dee had said. Louis found himself determined to be that someone.

It was nice listening to Felix talk about the dirt, or the air, or the water, or the sky. Louis had never been a great student of science, but when Felix explained these things, they sounded fascinating.

"See here." Felix pointed. "There's something about this environment that's stimulated the growth of only the algae—no higher plant forms."

Louis nodded, pretending he understood.

"It's weird. This planet's relatively young—geologically speaking, or at least, it looks that way, but its sun is so old. It's like it's stuck."

"Maybe it's the radiation," Louis said quickly, pleased to be able to offer a potential solution.

"That may be it," Felix agreed, nodding. "It may prevent complex life from really developing here."

"Is it hurting us?" Louis asked.

Felix shook his head. "We won't be here that long. If we stayed here, maybe, but it might take a couple generations even then." He stood up. "Come on, I think we can collect some of our probes."

When he stood, his hand brushed Louis's and, for one seemingly eternal moment, it lingered there. They both drew back quickly and Louis looked away.

They collected the rest of the samples in silence and didn't exchange a word until they'd returned to the Raptor.

"We're almost done here, actually," Felix said, as they were waiting for Helo to give them a lift back to _Galactica_. "Tomorrow should do it."

"Oh," Louis said, somewhat disappointed.

"So, I was wondering." Felix stopped, as if this was the end of his thought. Louis was beginning to think it actually was, when he opened his mouth and kept talking. "I was wondering if you wanted to get together or something. We could talk more about this. I mean, you seemed interested."

"You mean the algae?"

Felix nodded.

"Sure," Louis said, scratching his nose. Of course, he was interested in more than just the algae.

**

"You are amazing," Dee said, when she cornered Louis in the head that evening.

"Er, thank you," he said, wrapping his towel more securely around his waist.

"You are!" she insisted. "Since he started spending time with you, Felix has really opened up." She paused, thinking. "I think you two would be really perfect for each other."

Louis had of course been thinking about it, but having it said directly to him was a little jarring.

"Do you think so?" she prodded. Her eyes lit up. "You _do_. Oh, you like him!"

Louis couldn't deny it, so he didn't.

Plus, Dee wasn't letting him talk.

"Well, I think he likes you, too," she was saying. "So have a good time on your date tonight." She patted him on the shoulder and then she was gone.

Louis hadn't realized it was a date. He thought back to what day it was.

Tuesday. Go figure.

**

Louis made his way to Felix's quarters at the appointed hour. He wondered if Felix also felt that it was a date. Maybe it was all in Dee's mind.

"Hi," Felix said.

"Hi." He looked around. "Just us?" That was what had been implied by the invitation, he thought, but he would rather make sure. It was better to be certain than to be surprised by people joining them.

"Just us," Felix said. He gave Louis a cursory look. "Does that bother you?"

"Not at all." Louis smiled.

They sat down, Felix on his bunk and Louis in a chair.

"I love what you've done with the place," Louis said. That was stupid, he realized belatedly.

Nevertheless, Felix laughed. "Did Dee put you up to this?"

The question was so sudden that it caught Louis so much by surprise that he was unable to come up with a convincing lie.

Felix sighed. "I'm sorry. I suppose she means well—"

"What are you talking about?"

Felix looked surprised. "Didn't she tell you to spend time with me?"

Louis paused. "Not in so many words…"

"What did she say, though?"

"Nothing." This would take all his courage against the power of Tuesday. "I'm spending time with you because I like you."

Felix just stared at him. "You liked hearing about the algae?"

"Well… sort of." Louis supposed this wasn't too terrible of a lie, since Felix seemed to find the algae interesting. "But mostly, I just wanted to spend time with you. Get to know you better."

When he looked up, Felix was still staring at him.

"Is that okay?" Louis asked hesitantly.

"Yeah, it's okay." Felix's voice sounded faint. "Because the thing is, I wasn't exactly telling you about the algae because I thought you were interested in it. It's because I kind of wanted to keep you around."

"Where does Dee come into this?"

Felix rolled his eyes. "She wished me luck on my date tonight."

Louis laughed, relieved. "Me, too."

"Oh, gods." Felix shook his head. "So, I guess we kind of got set up."

"Yeah."

There was a pause.

"Do you mind?" Felix asked.

"Not really," Louis admitted.

Felix smiled. Louis suddenly had the strange urge to move to sit next to Felix, so he did.

That got him much closer to Felix. And Felix's lips. Very slowly, Louis leaned in and kissed him. Felix was ready for him, as if he'd been planning on kissing Louis before too long.

"I have to admit," Felix said, as they broke apart, "there could have been a better way to do this than making us tramp around down on the planet together and get all sweaty. She could've had the decency to make plans with both of us and then drop out."

Louis frowned. "That wasn't her. Tigh was the one who told me to go help you."

Felix's eyebrows rose. "Okay, there's no way—"

"No."

Felix snorted. "So, I guess we can't really blame Dee for that anyway."

"No," Louis said, leaning in to kiss him again, "but we can let her think she had something to do with it."

Tuesday wasn't so bad after all, he decided. He liked Tuesdays.


End file.
